Palm Trees

Palm trees seem to represent a tropical vacation and this design is perfect for this Hawaiian section. Palmaceae or Arecaceae are other names for this palm tree family. Most of these plants are restricted to the tropical, subtropical and warm temperature climates.

I was going to do an etched design for this section, but found some ideal fused glass decals. These are easy to apply and fire inside the kiln. It really saves some time in etching and the pattern can be placed on any color glass as opposed to etching which can only be done on Dichroic glass and involves a few more steps to achieve the final product.

They came with detailed instructions that are clearly written and easy to follow. I chose to cut the pattern up a little so that the setting sun was more in the upper right corner. This particular decal is low fire, so the piece will only be taken to approximately 1050 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Determine which glass you desire as your background and fuse either two or more pieces together to a full fuse. This will give the glass a smooth texture to slide decal onto..

3. Clean the glass with your desired glass cleaner. Dry the piece with a lint free towel to get off all of the water.

4. Remove the sheet of paper that is protecting the decal.

5. Cut the desired decal to your preferred size and shape.

6. Pour some distilled water into a clean container.

7. Soak pre-cut decal in water until it can be easily slid off of background paper.

8. Delicately and slowly slide the decal onto glass.

9. Blot the decal with a paper towel removing unwanted bubbles from under the decal.

10. Allow the piece to dry thoroughly. All of the moisture must be removed from decal and glass before firing inside the kiln. This may take up to 24 hours or a minimum of 12 hours.

11. Place the dry piece on a kiln shelf that has been either washed with kiln wash or protected with kiln paper.

12. Shut the kiln lid or access. Use some kiln posts to vent the kiln about 1-2 inches. The kiln lid should be open about 1-2 inches to vent kiln and allow all the embedded materials from the medium to burn off.

15. Soak the piece at this temperature for about 10 minutes to allow the glass to even out in temperature.

16. Take the glass piece up as fast as possible to the final firing temperature of between 1034-1074 degrees Fahrenheit if firing low-fired decals. Take the piece up to 1280-1320 for high fire decals

17. Soak the glass at this temperature for about 8-10 minutes.

18. Bring the fired piece down to the designated annealing temperature and hold at this temperature for 1 hour.

19. Turn off and unplug the kiln. If the unit is built using heavy fire bricks, it can cool off by itself. On the other hand, if the unit is assembled with some ceramic fiber, it must be kept on and you must monitor it so that it does not cool down any more than about 300 degrees Fahrenheit per hour.

20. When the temperature reads below 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the kiln may be opened, and the piece can now be turned into any desired object.